Knowledge that empowers is Knowledge iTrust.

Past

The Peace Diaries was launched in January 2002 with grants from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the W.T. Grant Foundation and the New York State Education Department . The vision: To establish a forum where teachers and students of every background (race, gender, creed and religion) could gather to learn about each other and address issues on topics of human rights, community, family, culture, democracy, conflict and peace. Web-based education technology brought together learners in classrooms in sixteen countries to collaborate on projects that have produced content for the Web, books and radio. English Language Writing supported by a web-based teacher/student literacy tool attracted ESL and EFL teachers and their students to the program to not only strengthen their global agency but also to practice and learn English. For the World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johanesburg, South Africa – Knowledge iTrust produced radio shows on community, culture, education and sustainable development. The shows included originial interviews with Arun Gandhi, Per Anderson, Ela Gandhi and Joseph Shabalala.

Steps to Literacy

Due to the successful implementation of the Peace Diaries and its support of literacy for both native and new English-language writers, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation funded the launch of an original concept to support middle-school aged English-language learners academic writing with speech recognition technology. Knowledge iTrust’s Dr. Karen Kaun partnered with the Center for Multiple Languages and Technologies at Teachers College Columbia University to pilot the project in a New York City school with a large Latino population.

Tanzanian Water Harvesting

While conducting field research on ICT for development and education in Moshi, Tanzania, Dr. Karen Kaun learned about a school that was in need of a water harvesting solution for their garden that supplied students at the school with their daily lunch. Through the internet, Dr. Kaun connected school leaders with NGOs that were able to supply the school with information and resources to construct the system. Knowledge iTrust raised donations for the materials.